o^^^^^^^^ 



oooooooooooooooooooooooooocx>oocooooooo 



o 



o 

Q 

o 
o 
o 
o 
o 
o 
o 
o 
o 
o 
o 

8 

o 
o 
o 
o 
o 
o 
o 



POGONNUGK HISTORICAL 



SOCIETY'S 



COLLECTIONS 



o 
o 
o 
o 
o 



NUMBER TWO 



§ INDIANS OF THE WEBUTUCK VALLEY 



BY 



I MYRON B, BENTON 



jKqoOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO® 



POGONNUGK HISTORICAL 
SOCIETY'S 



COLLECTIONS 



NUMBER TWO 



INDIANS OF THE WEBUTUCK VALLEY 



BY 



MYRON B. BENTON 



liAKBVILLE JOURNAL 
1912 






Gift 

Association 
MW 8 1«I4 




y^y^ /^^^^s.^- 



POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY S COLLECTIONS 



To my friends of the Sharon Literary Club : 

The paper which my friend Mr. Dyer has very kindly 
undertaken to read for me before you this evening was 
written last winter, and it was under the expectation, as 
you all know, of the meeting being at my own house. It 
is consequently written from that view-point. It has 
seemed to me better than to now make any change of the 
wording of the papep, as then written, to ask you, when 
any reference occurs tS locality, to the points of the com- 
pass, for instance, etc., to place yourselves in imagination 
in the spot where, unfortunately, I am a prisoner for the 
time being. 

It is a great regret that you cannot be here with me on 
this occasion in bodily presence. I looked forward to the 
time when I should have, not only the pleasure of so many 
of my friends being assembled beneath my roof, but also 
to make the "function" a sort of Aboriginal Symposium — 
a meeting of the Club which should pay a memorial tribute 
in various ways to the vanished dwellers of our beautiful 
valley. This, not only by what our members can com- 
municate, and what we trust we shall hear from visitors 
who favor us with their presence — those who have made 
a special study of this fascinating subject — but also 
by the display of contributions from various hands of many 
rare and choice relics of that mysterious race, so near to us 
in the imperishable traces they have left for our curiosity 
and wonder, and yet so far in the 

"Dark backward and absym of time" — and, still more 
obscure in the dim mists of a divergent development and 
evolution. 



4 POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY S COLLECTIONS 

M}' disappointment remains; but, with friendly and 
cordial remembrances to its members, 1 send my greetings 
to the Club this evening, wishing it success and prosperity 
in its future course, and hoping some time to "lend a 
hand" in the promotion of its laudale objects. 

Myron B. Benton. 
Troutbeck, Nov. 3, 1902. 



THE INDIANS OF THE WEBUTUCK. 

Gilbert White, the world-famous author of "The 
Natural History of Selborne," pursued his investigations 
beyond the birds and quadrupeds and other wild life of his 
native parish. He afterwards wrote a little work on "The 
Antiquities of Selborne." He began this with the state- 
ment that the Selborne Church could make no pretensions 
to antiquity, as it dated back only to the reign of Henry 
VII. The American reader is rather taken aback by this 
first sentence; we feel brought up, as it were, with a 
"round turn." Dating back only to the reign of Henry 
VII ! Really what does it take to make an antiquity? We 
certainly want to think that a period previous to the Re- 
formation ; previous to the reign of "good Queen Bess," 
before the Spanish Armada was scattered in desolation and 
ruin, between the wrath of God and of true hearted Protest- 
ant Englishmen ; before even Henry VIII had conceived 
his grand matrimonial religious project — a period as far 
back in history as this, must have some flavor of antiquity. 

But then everything is relative. We turn to our 
Webutuck instead of Selborne. 

Even the "Round topped Meeting House" of Amenia 
Union, where the Rev. Ebenezer Knibloe preached his 
long anti-Revolutionary sermons, and where he continued 



POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 5 

stoutly to pray for tlie King and Royal family altogetlier 
too long to suit the sentiments of his restive congregation — 
even were this curious building still standing, it would be 
a crudely new structure by the side of the Selborne Church. 
Our most ancient houses are scarcely one hundred and fifty 
years old ; though we dote on the venerable antiquity of 
the Penoyer House, known as Dr. Tiffany's; on that fine 
Gubernatorial mansion near it; on the quaint lettered 
Huguenot gable of the Delamater House, here across the 
brook from us! I can fancy the kindly, derisive smile on 
the withered face of the old Selborne clergyman at the 
mention in his presence of such structures as these as 
antiquities! 

"Oh smile among the shades," good Gilbert White ! 
Yet I will aver that even here in the Webutuck Valley we 
have possibly antiquities which would by far outrank those 
which you unearthed in old Selborne. 

Our ploughs turn them up from the soil; we find them 
scattered over wide surfaces in every nook. They are un- 
dated — unsigned. We know not under whose reign they 
were wrought and carved with infinite labor and skill from 
the stubborn mineral "core." But we have every reason 
to believe that many of tiiem made, as they are, of almost 
imperishable niaterial — are of great antiquity. They may 
be coeval with the weapons with which the Heptarchy were 
fighting their bloody battles before the coming of the Danes 
and Saxons to English shores! These trophies which we 
pick up in our fields — who knows but that they were being 
fashioned at various long separated epochs covering the 
stretch of what we know as history — these memorials in 
our secluded valley; our valley which was known to the 
white race but little more than two hundred years ago. 



6 POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 

All! The charm of coming upon these relics to-day. 
Only those who have experienced the sensation know the 
delight — as one is strolling over one's home field, thinking 
of the landscape beauties, or perhaps of the prospects of 
the coming crop, of whether the cut-worm and the crow 
will graciously spare a trifle of the corn for the autumn 
harvest — of having the eye suddenly arrested by a clean-cut 
shapely arrowhead beaming upon the surface of the soil. 
Crops are forgotten — let insect and bird pursue their work — 
here is something altogether more important. 

It must be confessed that this thing becomes some- 
what of a fad. We all know some shamrock -inspired, 
four-leaved clover-finder. He never comes in from a wiilk 
but with liis trophies. There were no four-leaved clovers 
for others of his party, not one ; but he had but to stoop down 
anywhere along the path to be able to flourish a handsome 
specimen in their baffled faces. 

By some such process of unconscious cerebration one 
who frequents the arrowhead fields comes to find that he 
has a sort of second sight all the while on the lookout for 
him. Not the slightest hint of the fragmentary shape, or 
of the texture of the hornblend, which is the usual material, 
this survitor. The material is of all shades of gray, some- 
times of green, yellow or red, and, when you take it in 
hand and compare it with the indigenous minerals of the 
field you can scarcely distinguish them. But somehow 
your reflex action imp knows all about it. His success is of 
course the better for favoring circumstances of soil and 
weather. A bright morning and a freshly turned field ; 
and if there has been a shower over night, the first rays of 
the sun dry the small mineral surfaces while the soil is yet 
moist and dark. Oh ! Then it is that the early bird catches 
the worm. 



POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 7 

Scarcel}' ever, under favoring conditions in the spring 
time, do I stroll across any of these fields immediately near 
the spot where I am now standing that I do not return 
home with a genial glow in my pocket of flinty trophies 
jingling more merrily than coins. What if the specimens 
are just like former finds. What if they are imperfect, as 
the greatest share always are. They are valuable, and ever 
afterwards treasured with most miserly care. 

In these fields whose soil has been turned and over- 
turned for one hundred and fifty years, where our modern, 
complex civilization seems as fixed and immutable as that 
of the older settlements of the world, we have the domestic 
animals, and many species of plants which have followed 
us — not from Europe only, but from Asia, when Europe 
was a wilderness; we have arts and skills of handicraft, as 
old, that have clung to our race; and here, right at our 
feet, in our daily paths, lie these momentoes of an age and a 
race separated from us by a vast space. There may or 
there may not a great length of time have intervened; but 
what a gulf is that between us and a race which knew the 
use of no metals. Ah ! What indeed had they for imple- 
ments and personal use, but the saplings of their forests, 
the bones and skins of the animals they had slain, and the 
crude, stubborn stones which they must shape with their 
hands as best they could fashion and mould with hands 
and fingers like ours. 

The chasm which separates us is indeed vaster than 
any figure of time can express — the chasm between the age 
of electricity and the stone age. It is easy then to under- 
stand the growing magical fascination of this little link in 
our hands between two such different phases of human 
development. 



8 POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY S COLLECTIONS 

But right here is an important point for us to note. 
We are not separated from the Indian by a great mental 
chasm. It is one of condition ; of environment. 

Possibly the famous Neanderthal skull is of the exact 
pattern of that of certain ancestors of ours of the pithecoid 
type; possibly that simian, half erectile skeleton found in 
recent years in Java, of which Ernst Haeckel and other 
naturalists make so much is that of our remote ancestor. 
If all this be true, still the Indian of the American conti- 
nent, as we know him, is practically as far removed from 
such ignoble origin as we. He is human; and much 
higher up in the scale, too, than many a people whom we 
find in remote quarters of the earth today. The Indian is 
educable; and not a small share of the higher sentiments 
could be awakened in his breast it was found; but, alas! 
not too often was the flower of humanity brought to bloom 
in the arctic moral atmosphere of the early days of the 
settlement. 

The Indian undoubtedly lacked a certain hereditary 
discipline of character which rendered him a weak com- 
petitor in the stern struggle for existence between the races; 
but that which made the great chasm between them was, 
as I say, not a fundamental difference in character — not a 
matter of the stage of moral evolution as seemed to he in- 
dicated by the respective civilization of the two races. 
The physical condition and environment of the aborigines 
for ages — their nomadic wandering life, had deprived them 
of those accunuilations of experience, that storing of 
acquirements from generation to generation which are 
really what make civilization. Thus it happens that a 
race that could, a Logan, a Teoumse, a King Philip, a Red 
Jacket; who as Titz Greene Hallock, the poet, tells us had 



POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS « 

-The monarch mind, the mystery of commanding, 

The birth-hour gilt— the art Napoleon 
Of winning, fettering, moulding, weilding, banding, 
The hearts of millions till they move as one" 
-a race that could at intervals produce such noble and 
brilliant figures was still, as a whole, in the dim, far back- 
ground of the Stone Age. 

It is pleasant to reflect that here in our smihng Webu- 
tuck Valley there was no collision between white and 
Indian- the whole record is one of peace and good will. 
Capt Garret Winnegar, the earliest settler of this region- 
at least, the earliest after Daniel Boone, the solitary pioneer, 
Richard Sackett-the Winnegar who located m what is 
now known as Amenia Union, we learn from Mr. Reed s 
-Early History of the Town of Amenia," lived on the 
most friendly terms with the Indians, by whom he was re- 
garded with the greatest respect, and whom he several 
times defended against the injustice of their white neigh- 
bors- and it is said that he gave his children charge at 
his death that they should never allow the Indians to go 
from their doors in want of food. , ,, n ., 

But who were these Indians of the Webutuck Valley i 
What is their history? "The short and simple annals of 
the poor "-how applicable to them is the verse of the poet ; 
"The short and simple annals oi the poor!" 
"Brief indeed is the story," gather all we may of ab- 
original life here, they have left the silent mementoes of 
their skill in our fields, and a few picturesque names which 

we cherish. . . , . 

Mrs. Sigourny, in her long life of verse writing, lef 
us little that we value as poetry ; but there are two lines of 
hers which have always clung in my memory. Speaking 
in one of her poems, of the names which the Indians have 



10 POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 's COLLECTIONS 

given to so many of our ])eautifnl lakes and rivers, slie 
exclaims: — 

"Their uaiue is on your waters" 

"Ye cannot wash it out." 

Webntuek, is it "Beautiful Hunting Grounds?" 
This is what Eunice Mauwee, the last of the Schaticooks, 
told me many years ago. Shegave me, too, as I remember, 
its liquid, flowing Indian pronounoiation, from which our 
Webutuck is not a little abbreviated. To my regret I have 
never been able to recall it: as unfortunately no phonetic 
record was made on the spot. Wassaic, too, with a simihir 
variation of the modern form, she sold me signified "hard 
work," from the tumultous course of that stream through 
its rocky gorge. 

But for Webutuck, my friend Mr. Isaac Hunting, 
has made considerable study of Indian sources, has an- 
other signification. He connects it with Peaked Mountain 
near South Amenia, the Weputting of the Indians — from 
Weepe-tooth, literally "Tooth Mountain," which certainly 
would be an appropriate name for that isolated sharp cone. 

All who are familiar with the topography in that 
vicinity know of that singular pass through the mountains 
of Bog Valley; a narrow way between steep ranges, some 
five or six miles in length, practically level throughout its 
extent. This was the favorite trail of the Indian fishers 
and hunters — an easy short cut from the Housatonic to the 
Webutuck. As you come westward tin-ongh the monoto- 
mous pass, and are just about to be ushered into the We- 
butuck Valley, suddenly rises before you that sharp pic- 
turesque cone— that "Wolf Tooth," the Webutting. What 
more natural than that the Indians, those residing on the 
Housatonic side at least, should have named our stream 
the "Tooth Mountain River?" So Mr. Hunting reasons. 



POCONXUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 11 

I am no aboriginal linguist ; but to me the resemblance in 
sound is scarcely close enough for identity. 

We know at any rate that the Indians found our valley 
■'Beautiful Hunting Grounds". 

The short and simple aunals of the poor Indian are 
quickly recited. The race, already subdued, was despised 
by the early white settlers. The useful, if also despised 
negro, was rated higher. 

The Indians, who were settled all along our valley 
from the lakes to the junction of the Webutuck with the 
Housatonic, were Mohicans of the great Algonquin divis- 
ion ; and they were undoubtedly the early possessors. But 
in the early part of the 17th century, long before white 
occupation, there was an invasion among the primitive 
Mohicans, of which there is another story. 

Very early in Connecticut history the inevitable con- 
flict between white and red came on. There were frequent 
encounters. To this day a well-known summer resort on 
the coast, some fifteen miles east of New Haven, is known 
as "Sachem's Head." Here in 1637, so early as that, 
during the first three or four years of the coming of the 
whites — a Pequot Sachem was pursued, and his retreat cut 
off upon this promontory. He was slain, and his head was 
set aloft in the crotch of a tree where it remained a ghastly 
terror for many years. So "Sachem's Head" has com- 
memorated this tragedy for over two and a half centuries; 
and has commemorated, no less, the barbarism of our own 
race in that age ! 

The great Pequot battle, of Groton, had occurred just 
previously the same year, 1637. There were six hundred 
Indians killed, and they were completely routed. I am not 
at all proud that one of my ancestors was in the thick of 
that fray; though there was afterwards a special grant of 
land made to him for his valor in the fight. 



12 POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 

The battle of Groton practically settled the war problem 
in Counecticut though tlie terrible contest went on for 
nearly forty years longer in the Narragansett region, only 
to end when King Philip was slain in 1675. 

The Pequwts, overcome and scattered, at least a small 
band of them pursued their way westward, and here, at the 
foot of our valley, among the mountains, became known as 
the Shaticooks. Connecticut set off a liberal reservation 
for them in the town of Kent, where they remain to this 
day, what there are left of the tribe. It is long, since 
there was an individual of unmixed lineage — red, white, 
black blood. The mixture was found not to be uplifting. 

To these Mohicans and Shaticooks, at that time, how 
far off it seemed they were from their white foes. Would 
they ever be discovered in this secluded nook? It was not 
possible that tlie whites would ever get so far into the 
wilderness. Ah! Little were they aware of how surelj' 
the slow, heavy tread of those ox teams of the Yankee 
farmers were creeping westward, and were occupying every 
inch of the ground as they advanced. 

Yet we must remember that there was a period of well 
towards a century of respite for the Indian between the 
battle of Groton and the time when our valley was settled. 
It seems now a long interval, when we survey the rapidity 
with which, on the whole, the continent has been overrun. 

There were the Dutch of the Hudson River on one 
side, and the New Englanders on the other; still kept at 
bay by the primeval forest. 

Here was an Elysian retreat indeed for the failing and 
hunted Indian. The valley, as we know from tradition, 
was to a large extent treeless in its central plains, but 
skirted by groves of gigantic sycamores, white oaks and 
tulip trees. The deer, the bear, and otlier noble game 



rOCONXUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 13 

roamed through this stately park. The river, then a much 
hirger stream — for which statement we have undoubted 
authority — was teeming with fish. There were the beaver, 
the otter, tlie mink and the musk-rat for their fur. What 
more could the heart of our brothers of the Stone Age 
desire? They must have thought there was a foretaste of 
the Happy Hunting grounds. 

Can we imagine the sensation which was kindled 
among this sequestered people, one August day in 1694, 
when Capt. Wadsworth, at the head of sixty dragoons, con- 
ducting a body of commissioners, swept suddenly into their 
view. These were the Massachusetts and Connecticut 
deputations which had met other Indian commissioners, 
from other states, for a grand conference at Albany : and 
they were now on their homeward way. 

They came, as I have elsewhere given some account, 
in at the very head waters of the valley, through the moun- 
tain gateway of Boston Corner. In the company was the 
Rev. Benjamin Wadsworth, afterwards the president of 
Harvard College, and to his meagre journal we owe what 
little knowledge we have of this notable expedition — the 
earliest record, so far as I am aware, of the white man in 
the Webutuck Valley. 

Their course must have been along the small stream, 
such as the Webutuck is in its course through the town of 
North East, down to the Indian settlement at Wequognock; 
but this was long before the coming of the Moravian mis- 
sionaries. B\om Sharon Valley they proceeded southward, 
undoubtedly following the Indian trail within a few rods 
of the spot where we are assembled, but on the other side 
of the river. Very likely they saw the smoke ascending 
from the wigwams of a busy village upon this side — upon 
the plateau in the orchard here, where marks of its situa- 



14 rOCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 

tion are very manifest to-day. Thence the commissioners 
and their military guard proceeded down the valley to a 
point below South Amenia, where they took that conven- 
ient cross-cut of Bog Valley, still on the Indian trail — 
through the mountains to the Housatonic. 

We may be sure no circus cavalcade ever entered a 
rural precinct with the sensation aroused by this mounted 
company of soldiers and dignified commissioners, I do 
not imagine there was any fear of them; rather open-eyed 
wonder and amazement. How the squaws must have run, 
with papooses bobbing on their shoulders, to get a nearer 
view. The fisherman must have dropped his bone spear ; 
the hunter slung his bow with slackened thong; and no 
doubt the old arrow maker, in the village behind the 
spring here, just in the rear of the house, dropped for once 
his nugget of horn blend and curious tools and ran to the 
bank of the stream to gaze upon the wondrous spectacle. 

But the strange vision vanished as quickly as it had 
come. The Indians' happy respite continued; it may have 
been still a few years before he saw another white face. 
But the white faces appeared at last, and thickly enough. 
The reign of the Indian was soon over. 

His history is not written — very little of it pertain- 
ing to this locality remains in tradition. Some of the old 
men of my boyhood used to tell me of the times when the 
Indians still followed the stream on their fishing excursions, 
mingling peacefully with the white inhabitants; and in the 
spring time they were sure to come along with their win- 
ters' work of baskets for sale. Their residence in all the 
later years was in Shaticook. 

I have always been glad that I was so fortunate as to 
have an interview with Eunice Man wee, where I saw her 
In her little cottage in Schaticook about the year 1859 



POCONNUCK HISTORCAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 15 

This was a few months before lier death; and, though her 
exact age was not known, there were records in connection 
with incidents of her life, such as her baptism and connec- 
tion with the Congregational church in Kent, which 
showed that she was between 103 and 104 years of age. 

I found her tenderly cared for by a bright middle 
aged woman, her granddaugliter; and I happen to remem- 
ber that this woman's grandchild was playing upon the 
floor while I was talking with the aged woman. She was 
propped up in bed and, though feeble, her mind seemed to 
be perfectly clear. Pier granddaughter said she almost 
lived on strong tea. So the aboriginal races have fallen 
before the vices introduced by civilization. How much 
l)eyond the age of 104 this Indian princess might have 
lived, had it not been for the poisonous decoction, is a mat- 
ter of conjecture. I call her a princess, for she was tlie 
granddaughter of the old Sachem of the tribe, Gideon 
Mauweesemum. Her features were a strongly marked type 
of the race. In my short interview she related some in- 
cidents pertaining to her people, and the signification of 
the names which they have left us. A few years earlier, 
what a long panorama of Indian history in our locality she 
might have unrolled befm'e me. 

We have among us a d(>scendant of Eunice Mauvvee, 
one whom we all know. This is Edward Paret <>f Sharon. 
Though of mixed blood, he has striking traits of Indian 
ancestry; not alone in his complexion, for the "red man," 
as we all know, was only red when he had his war paint on, 
but in his features; and particularly we note a certain look 
in his eyes; not in their exj)ression, which is manly and 
straight forwan't, but in a peculiar indefinable glitter, a 
purely physical trait that is quite distinct from the appear- 
ance of the eye in either the negro or the white man. 



16 POCONNUCK HISTORCAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 

Edward Paret is, I believe, the great-great grandson of 
Eunice; and Eunice, as I have said was undoubted!}' the 
last of unmixed blood. 

So the race has vanished ; and for their history we 
must turn to the soil beneath our feet. This record shows 
that their occupation of the Webutuck Valley was numer- 
ous and extended over a long period of time, 

And it is to the valley -situations, and the shores of our 
lakes that this population was mostly confined. The area 
was very limited ; they roamed the liills and mountains on 
every side; but when it came to building the wigwam, it 
seems always to have been within a stone's throw of the 
water; lake or river. 

You have all probably noticed the singular geologic 
formation of the Webutuck Valley, characterized by suc- 
cessive level plateaus bordering tlie stream on botli sides, 
and with an abrupt steep terrace. They are higher and 
higher with every step down stream. These tablelands 
first appear at the "Twin Bridges," which I need tell no 
one, at least a Leedsvillian, are the bridges always known 
by that name, on the old Turnpike, near the Morehouse 
place. 

At this point they are only some two or three feet high ; 
but the down cutting of the river gives them an altitude of 
20 to 25 feet at Leedsville Brick Mills— looking westward 
across the river. The hamlet of Leedsville, itself, is upon 
one of them; and the plain-lots, to the front and rear of 
this house, as well. Just below South Amenia, is the largest 
and most striking of these. There are there a hundred acres 
or more of the perfect level plateau with the sharp outlines 
of the terrace higher than the like terraces at this point, 
which rises above the meadows and stream for the stretch 
of a mile. 



POCONXUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 17 

These plateaus were tlie the favorite haunts of the 
Indians, especially for their villages. They are of a dry 
gravelly loam, the most sanitary, as well as convenient 
localities he could have chosen . 

I could point out at least five village sites on this 
farm. How do we know them? It is the stone record, as 
ever, the village is known by its chips. These are partly 
their slivers of the arrow makers work of the indigenous 
white quartz; but in larger proportion are the chips of the 
dark flint, or hornblend, which had been brought from a 
distance. Sometimes there is a "core" of the latter, a 
solid chunk, which has the potentiality of several more 
implements than were ever realized. You find many im- 
perfect implements, very seldom a perfect one on the 
ground of one of these prehistoric villages. If such a 
"find" occurs, you may be sure that there was one day an 
accident in this cluster of wigwams. Perhaps a papoose, 
to keep him quiet, was given an arrowhead to play with ; 
with the result inevitable in the case of papooses, red or 
white. 

There is one village site to which I have already 
alluded, very circumscribed in area, but very rich in indi- 
cations of occupation, on the plateau here back of the 
spring; and it is eas}' to guess that the spring was the 
potent attraction . On the face of the terrace, some years 
ago, I came across a collection of fire stained stones, which 
gave a hint that they may be the remains of one of those 
curious steam-bath arrangements, well known among the 
Indians, the public bath of the village. Perhaps their 
ablutions were not very frequent; but they were sometimes 
very thorough. 

The fields further back, those lying along the Turn 
Pike, have always been rich in stone remains; and the 



18 POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 

same may be said of the wide plateau in front of this bouse. 
But in any field outside of this valley table-lands the find- 
ing of remains is rather infrequent. These plains too, I 
imagine, were the maize fields for the tribes as they are 
for us. The finding of stone hoes and other implements 
scattered over them is not infrequent. 

I have a collection of some hundreds of these Indian 
remains of a wide variety. It is perhaps unique in the 
fact that so large a number were all gathered from one 
farm, Among these are some of the rarer forms; but of 
course the larger portion is of such as can be duplicated in 
any collection. 

I know of no parallel, for instance, to one found in 
my strawberry bed a year or two ago. This is a fragment 
of a fossil of .some extinct animal, of smooth cylindrical 
form-here, be it noted where no fossils belong; and it must 
have been brought from a long distance. It was evidently 
used for a pestle in grinding war-paint Some of the very 
paint yet remains in the cellular interstices of this unique 
implement ! 

There iiave been two or three soapstone dishes, im- 
perfect, found upon the farm. One I have, and there is 
one in the hands of my friend, Mr. J. Joyce Smith, who, 
I must say, within the past few years, has been reaping a 
rich harvest from my fields. The material for these rare 
specimens was undoubtedly found in a small deposit, wliere 
both Indians and white men have quarries on the moun- 
tain east of Amenia Union. 

There is variety, certainly, in my little collection, 
knives, darts, hoes, spears, drills skinners, celts, battle- 
axes, etc.; but the arrow-heads outnumber all the rest. 
Here, for instance, is a mace, or banner-stone, as some 
archeologoists classify it. It is an implement of no mater- 



POOONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 19 

ial use; it served only a symbolic one, liaving been used, 
as is believed, in the religious ceremonies of the Indians. 
Tlie most remarkable feature is that it has a hole through 
it; and this is bored in the stone with as perfect precision 
as if it had been done by a machinist of to day. 

So far as I know this specimen is unique. I have 
heard of no other found in this region ; though it appears 
ill collections gathered in other places. Nor do I know^ of 
any other stone implement here which is pierced by a hole. 
The greater part of the Indians' weapons and tools are pro- 
vided with notches or with grooves by which wood or bone 
handles could be affixed, from the tiniest arrow-head to 
the heavy battle-axe; but never with a hole for the inser- 
tion of a handle or helve. 

The peculiarities of this mace give great probability to 
the theory that it was not of home manufacture but was 
brought from a distance, perhaps even so far as one of 
those wonerdful structures of the Mound Builders of Ohio. 
That people were much higher skilled in the arts; and it 
is believed that their country was over run at some period 
by the more barbarous tribes of the Atlantic coast. 

The Indian settlements at Wequagnock, or Indian 
Pond as more commonly called, is well known; and the 
story of the devoted Moravian missionaries has often been 
told. They labored but a short time among them before, 
through white rapacity and injustice, they were scattered and 
dispersed. It is not so generally known that there was a 
very populous settlement at the outlet of Silver Lake, that 
largest of our beautiful lake-groups and the only one 
among them, very singularly, whose Indian name has not 
been preserved. The proofs are plentiful of the site of 
this village in the field east of the small pond of Benedict's 
Mills. 



20 POCONNUCK HISTORCAL SOCIETY S COLLFX'TIONS 

Ml". Hunting is strongly of the opinion that this was 
tho chief settlement of the Indians to whom tlie Moravians 
came. He says it was always the custom of the mission- 
aries to build their houses and establish their head-quarters 
at some point outside of the native village, yet within easy 
reach of it; as would be the case here. 

There is less known about the pottery of the Webutuck 
Indians than of their art in other materials; yet there is 
no reason to think they were lacking in this branch. It 
seems at first thought, a mystery that nearly all the re- 
mains of it have vanished. In one instance, many years 
age, there was pottery found upon this farm. This was a 
portion of an earthern dish, and it had a decorative figure 
on the exterior, apparently made with a sharp stick or bone 
in the soft clay. 

With the scarcity of these remains we must take into 
account the effect of the elements. All unprotected wood 
or bone implements would of course quickl}' perish; and 
wherever rain and frost could reach a piece of native 
pottery the preservation of that, too, must have been brief. 

It was not hard and well baked, and, above all, had no 
glaze. 

I believe that our garden spots to distant ages will 
furnish specimens of the Yankee black-jack teapots. Now, 
with their one or two centuries in the soil, fragments of 
them flash out their jet as lustrous as if they had always 
been kept upon the dresser. Not so the Indian teapots, 
whatever the herb was which the ancestors of old Eunice 
steeped in them over the wigwam fire. 

The pottery, of which there were doubtless large 
quantities, has nearly all vanished. But exceptional con- 
ditions for preservation in some cases bring a great boon to 
the antiquarian, as they do also, in his field, to the geolo- 
gist. One such piece of good fortune has fallen to us. 



POCONNUCK HISTORCAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 21 

You have all heard of that remarkable discovery made 
two or three years ago by Mr. Charles Dakin, by which a 
little treasure-trove came to light at the foot of Indian 
Mountain near the lake. The accident of preservation 
here was a great overhanging rock which has slieltered a 
nook at its base from the destroying work of rain and 
frost. This cradle under the rock was a jewel casket in- 
deed ! Here among a few stone implements, were others 
of the else perishable bone, as well as many bone, sliell 
and tortoise fragments, stones showing the marks of fire, 
charcoal, etc. 

But above all was the wonderful revelation of the 
potter's skill ! Here were fragments of considerable size of 
vessels and dishes. Among them I counted five or six dis- 
tinct patterns, showing there must have been as many 
different vessels, most of theni good size, but the parts to 
complete them were lost. 

The thing which gives one the liveliest impression in 
looking over this broken mass of decorated pottery, and a 
real glow of interest in the works of our brother of the 
Stone Age, is the beauty of these designs. They are 
elaborate, and wrought out with great care for studied 
effect! They might well furnish hints for a modern 
decorator. 

Oh! how interesting to discover that it was not alone 
the stew that was cooked and served in these vessels which 
dominated the motives and work of these far off, mysteri- 
ous people. Ah! there was something else; they had 
thought for something other than food even with the crav- 
ings of hunger pursuing them, there was the ideal, the be- 
ginnings of the love of beauty, and gropings toward art for 
art's sake. Such a discovery sheds a rainbow tint upon 
these fragments of brown pottery ! 



22 POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 

But I will leave this part of my subject for some of 
our friends who were intimately concerned in the bringing 
to light of this unique store of mementoes, to give us now, 
as I hope they will, some more accurate account of it than 
I can. 

I only wish to refer, in closing, to the very singular 
fact that there were discoveries, it happened, of just such 
aboriginal remains about the same time in the southern 
part of Westchester County; and the unearthing of the 
treasures there was so nearly simultaneous with the opera- 
tions going on under just such cave-like ledges not far 
from the shores of Long Island Sound and the boundaries 
of Greater New York that, really, some of the accounts at 
the time in the daily papers seemed like an attempt of the 
reporters to give a graphic pen-picture of Mr. Dakin, Mr. 
Newell and Dr. Bassett digging for dear life under that 
picturesque rock-shelter, on the east side of Indian Pond ! 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 076 275 1 



